He's best known for creating the South Beach diet, now Dr. Arthur Agatston has come up with perhaps the best predictor of a future heart attack and doctors in our area are using the test to diagnose your risk.

Jeff Auletta works a stressful job in Lantana. He's close to turning 40 and admits he has health concerns.

"My father has a history of it he died of congestive heart failure," Auletta says. "He started having heart problems in his 40s, I'm getting to my 40s, so I wanted to get a little ahead of the game and find out if I'm at risk for a heart problem."

Auletta went to see Delray Beach cardiologist Dr. Eric Lieberman who recommended a coronary calcium scan.

Lieberman says the test is like a mammogram of your heart and gives doctors a look at what's going to happen down the road.

"As soon as cholesterol starts to be deposited along the walls of the artery, it then becomes calcified and that calcification is what can be detected by the CAT scan," Lieberman says. So, it allows us to detect the disease before a patient has any symptoms or before they know anything is going on."

Lieberman says the test looks into the future and tells doctors whether a patient is going to be at risk of a problem 5, 10, 15 years from now.

Here's how the calcium score works:

Zero to 100 is in the good range

Above 100 means some calcium deposits detected in the arteries, patients may need to be put on cholesterol lowering drugs.

Above 400-500 additional testing is required and that patient will need to be treated aggressively with medication based on other risk factors.

Auletta's calcium score was zero. Despite his family history of heart disease, there was no trace of any plaque build up.

"For the last 10 years it's been in the back of my mind wondering what's in my future knowing what happened to my dad, so it puts me at ease a lot knowing this came back as a zero," he says.

So how do you know if you're a good candidate for the coronary calcium scan?

If you're between 30 and 50 years old, if you have a family history of heart disease and your cholesterol is in the moderate level, you're a perfect candidate. The test is not covered by insurance, but in most cases will only cost you a couple of hundred dollars. A small price to pay says Auletta, for something that can save your life.